Yacht and Boat sets sail for faster website

Australian classified website Yacht and Boat has improved load times and page views per visit since upgrading its cloud computing service in January 2013.

The site attracts 90,000 visitors per month. It includes articles, reviews and videos about boating and fishing.

Working with Crucial Cloud Hosting, the company implemented the Blaze cloud infrastructure. This includes a SolidFire solid state drive, storage area network and OnApp cloud management platform. According to Blaze, this promises customers guaranteed performance levels in the cloud and the ability to scale up or down as needed.

Yacht and Boat owner Ben Gaze, told Computerworld Australia that he was impressed with the website speeds Blaze was offering.

“The website was quite bloated and slow in its loading time so we were able to address that very quickly,” he said.

The company has worked with Crucial Cloud Hosting since 2011 and used a virtual private server prior to the cloud upgrade.

Gaze also hired Web development company Red Propaganda to optimise the website for smartphones and tablets.

This involved six months of design work and consultation to upgrade Yacht and Boat.

“The improved performance and better user experience has led not only to a reduction in bounce rates but people are viewing more of the content on each page,” he said. “This benefits both the site and our advertising partners.”

On average, there are 15 page views per visit. Gaze said he expects this to increase now that the website is optimised for mobile users.

“We plan to have listings in the thousands and we’re confident that this extra speed will allow us to run these [listings] in the future. With the Sydney Boat Show coming up we will be able to gauge page view and traffic increases.”

Gaze added that the company wanted to host the website in Australia to achieve fast response times.

“While some companies think that hosting offshore will save them money, I don’t believe that any overseas service could deliver the performance we’re getting for the same money.”

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